My wife and I decided she does the dishes and I do the laundry. I have been using different laundry detergents to see whats best for our needs. The only Tide I've liked is Tide Sport. Persil works greatat the cost of fading your clothes a little faster imo. Wisk makes very good laundry detergents. If you don't tend to get stains on your clothes, Mas Oscura is the best I've used for jeans and dark clothing. It's almost magic in a bottle. I've only seen Mas Oscura at Wal-Mart and it's usually near the Mexican laundry products. The BEST smelling laundry detergent is Surf Sparkling Ocean powder. If you absolutely must use an HE detergent, Woolite for Darks is good for dark clothes.

Take a test, wash 10 towels in your detergent and 10 in Charlies soap, then dry without fabric softener and fold them up. The 10 Charlies soap towels stacked up will be taller than the other detergent. Which to me means cleaner.

Just like oil, the best laundry detergent is whatever is on sale. We usually stock up when Target runs deals. They have deals where you get a free $5 or $10 gift card when you buy 2 or 3 + store coupons you can find online + manufacturer coupons = dirt cheap laundry detergent.

We've used Country Save for 25+ years. It's far less expensive than the brands the original poster listed off, there's no disgusting perfume smell, and it's safe for septic systems. In addition, it always gets our clothing clean without using optical brighteners (which can cause allergic reactions and itching) like the brands the original poster listed.

We've been Tide (liquid-only) for decades. No desire to try anything else. We clip coupons and stock up when it's on sale. The last time I used anything different was probably because a free sample came in the mail...and I don't remember what it was or when.

We use Tide exclusively. My favorite is Tide PurClean. No optical brighteners. Woolite is horrible. Wisk is going out of business. Liquids are generally better for oil and greasy stains. If you are looking for a good overal detergent, Tide PurClean, Tide Ultra Stain Release, and Cheer powder are great. The reason why I use Tide is because we generally buy them on sale with a coupon and pay no more than $3 for a 32 load bottle. Since it works well we do not need to use much.

Using Tide Simply Clean, but have used Xtra, Sun, LA's Most Awesome [99c Store made in US for 64 oz]. and made my own: Borax, washing soda and grating a bar of Zote] but learned from my best friend that going cheap on cleaning products is a mistake.

I have found Foca and Ariel from Mexico are excellent and inexpensive, but the Tide seems to work best.

Also have started adding White King water softener to my laundry and it's improved the results noticeably. But I think baking soda would accomplish the same thing.

Purex Clear has been pretty good and doesn't give me rashes. Arm and Hammer is also excellent.